Transducers generally convert electrical signals to mechanical signals or vibrations, and/or mechanical signals or vibrations to electrical signals. Acoustic transducers, in particular, convert electrical signals to acoustic signals (sound waves) and convert received acoustic waves to electrical signals via inverse and direct piezoelectric effect. Acoustic transducers generally include acoustic resonators, such as surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonators, and may be used in a wide variety of electronic applications, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), electronic gaming devices, laptop computers and other portable communications devices. For example, BAW resonators include thin film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs), which include resonator stacks formed over a substrate cavity, and solidly mounted resonators (SMRs), which include resonator stacks formed over an acoustic reflector (e.g., Bragg mirror). The BAW resonators may be used for electrical filters and voltage transformers, for example.
Generally, an acoustic resonator has a layer of piezoelectric material between two conductive plates (electrodes), which may be formed on a thin membrane. The piezoelectric material may be a thin film of various materials, such as aluminum nitride (AlN), zinc oxide (ZnO), or lead zirconate titanate (PZT), for example. Thin films made of AlN are advantageous since they generally maintain piezoelectric properties at high temperature (e.g., above 400° C.). However, AlN has a lower piezoelectric coefficient d33 than both ZnO and PZT, for example.
An AlN thin film may be deposited with various specific crystal orientations, including a wurtzite (0001) B4 structure, which consists of a hexagonal crystal structure with alternating layers of aluminum (Al) and nitrogen (N), and a zincblende structure, which consists of a symmetric structure of Al and N atoms, for example. FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an illustrative model of the common wurtzite structure. Due to the nature of the Al—N bonding in the wurtzite structure, electric field polarization is present in the AlN crystal, resulting in the piezoelectric properties of the AlN thin film. To exploit this polarization and the corresponding piezoelectric effect, one must synthesize the AlN with a specific crystal orientation.
Referring to FIG. 1, the a-axis and the b-axis are in the plane of the hexagon at the top, while the c-axis is parallel to the sides of the crystal structure. For AlN, the piezoelectric coefficient d33 along the c-axis is about 3.9 pm/V, for example. Generally, a higher piezoelectric coefficient d33 is desirable, since the higher the piezoelectric coefficient d33, the less material is required to provide the same piezoelectric effect. In order to improve the value of the piezoelectric coefficient d33, some of the Al atoms may be replaced with a different metallic element, which may be referred to as “doping.” For example, past efforts to improve the piezoelectric coefficient d33 have included disturbing the stoichiometric purity of the AlN crystal lattice by adding either scandium (Sc) (e.g., in amounts greater than 0.5 atomic percent) or erbium (Er) (e.g., in amounts less than 1.5 atomic percent) in place of some Al atoms.